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Monday, October 27, 2008

A Bottle of Honey

Haven't we all been perplexed, crippled and thwarted by that cone-shaped bottle of honey? Yes, plain old honey. In a bottle with the pointed tip. That you can't keep in the fridge ( for fear of it solidifying),that you can't keep on a Malaysian kitchen table (for fear of ants), that you don't want to bother to let it sit in a bowl of water to outsmart those ants and that you don't want to bother to cover the tip with a piece of foil to outsmart other bothersome beings like impregnated flies. So what do we do?

Let me not tell you the things that I have done to get that honey out (after refrigerating it). I have soaked the bottle in warm/hot water until the honey, along with the bottle, liquified (which took forever), I have struggled with the feat of making the bottle stand upside down, on its tip, on its own, hands free, for at least fifteen minutes or, out of frustration, I have wrung the bottle and then asked to be resuscitated afterwards from the effort of it all, and sometimes, just sometimes, I begin to wonder if I was, after all, just a stupid cow.

However, after having had one of my sons go to the mini market to get a bottle of honey for the pancakes that I was making for them, he came home with a bottle of honey that I found, after some pain, to be worthy of some blogological dissertation..

It's not the honey that I'm going to tell you about though but the bottle. It was actually labeled upside down. My first thought was how could any respectable manufacturing company have labeled their bottles up side down only to have it exported and have them sit on the shelves all around the world? So silly. I smirked.

But I took a second look and then out of itchy hands (gatal tangan) I turned it the 'right way up'. At least, what seemed the right way up, that is with the label the right way up. When I had done that I found that there was no opening on the 'top'. So I sat there staring at the bottle's bottom but with the label the right way up all the way. Oh God! this calls for some serious use of brain power.

In the meantime I took some pictures thinking that I might have stumbled upon the opportunity to win fifty ringgit from Star for strange, amusing and incomprehensible situations. Plus an evil opportunity to put CAPILANO HONEY LIMITED to shame and out of business.

However, still determined and hopeful to put things right, I turned it 'upside down' again, that is, with the label the wrong way up, with the bottom end at the bottom and the capped end at the top. Then I did the unthinkable. I flipped the cap open and peered inside. I snapped off the little thingy that sealed the opening and scrutinized further.

Ah..... discovery of the century and science at its most useful stared back smack into my flabbergasted face.

The opening was covered with a translucent and concave shield with an X cut across it. That, my dear Watson, was why the bottle was 'upside down' or that 'right side up' was actually the 'wrong side up'.

That little concave screen, with the X cut across it, allowed you to keep it 'upside down' or the 'right side up' (frankly in this here discussion it doesn't matter so long everything is put in inverted commas) for the easy flow of honey when you squeeze the bottle but at the same time it prevents the honey from leaking out when you don't squeeze the bottle inspite of the pressure from the weight of the honey when the bottle is 'upside down'. Why?

Well, the cross does not activate and open up unless the bottle is squeezed (meaning when extra pressure is exerted) and because of its concave shape, or convex shape if you are inside the bottle, it does not give way under all that pressure and therefore remains closed and seals off the opening so long the bottle is not squeezed(that is when there is no extra pressure being exerted).

I rest my case.

However, being the visionary that I am, I have taken pictures of this here bottle of honey so that those of you out there, who are still in an ignoramus state of mind like I was some seconds ago, will not have to go through the puzzling pain, the obtuse scrutiny and whimsical wonderment that I had to go through.